


names for what binds us

by klickitats



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Cassandra as HBIC, F/M, In Hushed Whispers Spoilers, Missing Scene, Red Lyrium, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3558215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klickitats/pseuds/klickitats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra and Varric wait for the end of the world together, locked in the bowels of Redcliffe Castle under Corypheus' thumb. The other side of living through "In Hushed Whispers."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. across a wound

**Author's Note:**

> After the Inquisitor vanishes, Cassandra and Varric spend a year as prisoners of Corypheus, the Venatori, and red lyrium at Redcliffe. By chance, I paired Cassandra and Varric with my Inquisitor and Dorian during my last playthrough of "In Hushed Whispers," then realized what I'd done and man, it hurt me so deeply that I had to write about it. Title from the poem "For What Binds Us," by Jane Hirshfield.
> 
> TW: body horror, because, well...red lyrium.

i.    _There are names for what binds us:_

_strong forces, weak forces._

_Look around, you can see them:_

_the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,_

_nails rusting into the places they join,_

_joints dovetailed on their own weight._

 

The curse of the tongue that’s always, somehow, right. _Fuck me_ , thinks Varric in the breath after the Herald and the mage (Flashy? Brights? Gem? He hadn’t had time to settle on a good name yet) completely, entirely, shitting disappear. They’re gone in a green whirlwind. Quicker than you can crack a walnut between your teeth.

Cassandra honest-to-Andraste _roars_ , her anguish painting the dim room just as well as the dim lights of the roaring fire. Her longsword drawn, she lunges towards Alexius. The heavy arc of steel sings once, twice, and then there’s a sickening plop as---

“No,” Felix cries, running at the Seeker but he’s doubled over as with a gesture she cripples him, the lyrium in his blood aflame. Alexius is sobbing, clutching his stump of a shoulder. His arm lies between the Seeker and he, the blood of it patterning her sword.

Her chest heaves. There’s something on her face, Varric realizes, and then—oh. Tears. Just two, streaking down her face on either side. Nothing in this room, not the Seeker’s sword, or the Tevinter magister, or the dismembered arm cold on the stone steps, or the sound of forces amassing outside the hall, nothing says _we’re fucked_ more than those two tears.

Varric grabs one of Leliana’s agents who had slaughtered the guard inside the hall and pulls her down to his level. “Get outta here,” he says, his rough voice low, “get the sister, get Cullen—someone has to tell them what happened.”

The agent—Ritts, he remembers, the scout they found frolicking with a mage in the Hinterlands—grabs his wrist and hauls. “You’re the storyteller, sir,” she says, eyes grim and grip firm, “so you’re coming with me to tell them yourself.”

The clamor outside the hall grows louder and he can hear them trying to break down the doors. Cassandra turns, tears gone as if they were never there, and her sword in hand.

“Go,” she says, and it’s colder than any stone. “I will make sure you have time to get away. Go. _Go._ ” She jerks her head towards the hidden passageway. When the scout yanks, Varric suddenly realizes that was an order for him, too. Her dark eyes are black—she intends to make them pay in limbs and blood.

He breaks Ritts’ grip, shoves her hard. “Tell them what happened,” he says, readying Bianca.

“Varric, leave,” snaps Cassandra. “There’s no need for us _both_ \--”

“Like hell there isn’t,” Varric growls.

“Varric—”

“Like _hell._ ” Her voice isn’t the only one acquainted with stone.

The scouts have fled. Cassandra pauses, nods, relents. It really is the end of the fucking world.

No more words pass between them—it’s only a matter of moments before the Venatori blast through the doors anyway. But Cassandra steps forward into her battle stance, shield gleaming and sword raised. As Varric takes his place behind her, arming Bianca, he notices the circlet of her braided hair. How, in the firelight, she looks like a woman king making her last stand. Every sinew in her body is ready, ready, ready for this, and has been her whole life, Varric realizes.

He snorts. Cassandra glances over her shoulder at him, one last bit of annoyance before they go.

“What?” she snaps.

“Nothing, Seeker. Just—I wrote a book that ended this way, once.”

Cassandra makes a disgusted noise at the back of her throat and then the doors burst open, Venatori swarming the place like vermin. The Seeker raises a cry that echoes, makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He fires and fires until his hands blister and bleed. She slices through soldier and made like paper tissue, a fine and violent dance of death.

 _But you deserved a better ending than this_ , is the last thing Varric thinks, and then it is over.

 

~~~

 

He does not die. That’s the most surprising thing.

Varric wakes up bruised and battered within an inch of his life on the floor of a wet cell. It takes him awhile to sit up. He winds his fingers through the trellis of the bars and uses it to pull himself upright. The metal is weathered and old but solid, and he tests the bars fruitlessly before sagging back against the wall.

There is a dim torchlight down the hall—his eyes slowly adjust to the dark. He listens, ears pricked, for any noise. Skittering of a rat. Something heavy and armored pacing above. But no breath but his own.

 _Seeker_ , he thinks, but can’t finish the sentence. The irony is too cruel, even for a wicked tongue like his. The curse of the tongue that’s always sodding right. _I’ve written enough stories to see how this one ends._ A lot of Void-taken good that did. Andraste’s _tits._

Adaar—a tall gray figure, his horns silver-capped and arched back towards the sky. Slender and lean for a Qunari, with an easy laugh and knives that he juggled once for a little boy who had lost his sister at the Crossroads. It is impossible to imagine a Qunari dying until it actually happens, and Varric has seen more than his fair share of dead ox-men. Strangely fitting, to be snuffed out like a candle. A moment there, a moment gone.

It’s wrong that a kind man’s life is snuffed out so easily. But that’s the way of the world. Perhaps it’s a good thing that it’s ending.

Varric closes his eyes and sleeps.

 

~~~

 

Time melts and fades with no way to keep track of it. Varric knows it has been days, but how many he can’t say. At least five weeks. He’s reasonably sure. Probably.

Water and crusts of bread appear periodically, just enough to keep him alive. He plots out novels on the floor of his cell, tries to exercise to keep his muscles from wasting away. Most of all—he listens. For the sign of anything. He hears screams, one night, long echoes from far away. Sometimes the sound of armored feet above grows loud and quick, as though many are running through the hall.

It never occurs to him that the Seeker might be dead. If he is alive, she must be—there is no alternative, no Maker’s calculus that could equate any other answer.

And then—dragged out, bright lights, lots of hands and lots of voices, chained and trussed up—it hurts, and it sings, that _voice_ , how can a voice hurt like that, how can a voice press knives into your veins?—and fighting, fists flailing against chains but there are too many, too many, and the voice _fucking fuck_ teeth dragging on the inside of his skin, lighting in the blood, a noose made of— _Maker, Maker, stop stop stop stop_ —it can’t, it burns, it burns, it burns, fire is her water—the phrase won’t leave him, he hangs onto it and the cool voice murmuring it—fire is her water, fire is her water, fire is her water—

 

 

ii.   _And see how the flesh grows back_

_across a wound, with a great vehemence,_

_more strong_

_than the simple, untested surface before._

 

 

He does not die. Again—surprising.

Someone is praying. It jolts him up, too fast, and then he falls back down when pain shoots through his arm. Like he dipped his arm in the magma that runs under Sundermount.

“Varric?” The cool voice from before. He blinks. Sits up, slower.

The sound of it is like a hand on his shoulder. “Seeker,” he breathes, the first word in weeks.

His eyes adjust to the dim—he’s in a different cell, and this hall has its own torch. Fucking _fancy._

“Holy shit,” he says.

He scoots over to the bars, and sees Cassandra, kneeling in the cell across from his. He can just make out her silhouette in the shadow. The pain rushes through his blood again and he gasps, leaning his forehead against the bars.

“It’s alright,” she says—is that a note of _comfort_ in her voice? (The world’s ending, he remembers). “Breathe.” Her voice is solid, like stone. Like he could climb up into it. “Breathe, Varric—”

His eyes sting and water with the pain. He looks down—and it—no—no—

“Breathe.” Cassandra’s voice is more insistent. She’s at the bars now, her fingers laced through them. “Varric, you have to be calm.”

Red crystals between the fingers of his left hand. Dotted, like little gems. They go up his arm, twining in jagged constellations. Bartrand’s crying face dances behind his eyes, his wailing moans and pleading to die—what a bastard he had been, but nothing should be like this. The sound of Bianca firing the bolt into his chest—someone’s gonna have to kill him, the Seeker’s gonna have to _kill him_ —

The pain rivals his turmoil and overwhelms like a tide of red, and he’s aware he’s gasping like a fish out of water. It lays its claws in deep.

“Varric.” Cassandra’s voice, that hand on his shoulder. It squeezes. Something gives in him. Coolness settles along his bones. It’s not much against the red lyrium, but it makes his eyes focus again.

“What did you do?” he manages after a time.

“Something new,” Cassandra answers, and she sounds surprised. “I tried the…the opposite of my gifts as a Seeker. My strength is low,” she makes a displeased sound, “but it almost worked.”

Varric sighs, settles back against the wall. He looks at the lyrium pulsing in his skin. “Shit,” he says.

 

~~~

 

They pool their knowledge together like two sparse hands of cards. Cassandra has a slightly better sense of time—a month, she says confidently, as though it means something. It’s been a month. She’s seen people come in and out of the cells—people she doesn’t know. They look like militiamen. They stay for a day or two, get taken, and then they’re gone.

“They take you yet?” Varric asks. Cassandra pauses.

“They try,” she answers. “It’s not working.”

He gets his taste of it some hours later, when Venatori come down to take Cassandra. She kneels in the center of her cell, ready for them.

It’s hard to see _exactly_ what happens—Varric lends some artistic license to his recounting—but Cassandra kind of strangles the mage with her bare hands and wrestles the sword away from one of their warriors. A magister eventually comes down and ends the whole thing by freezing Cassandra to the neck when she can’t quite dodge an ice bolt, and then locking her back in the cell.

 

~~~

 

So they decide to stop feeding her.

Varric flicks a crust of something—he won’t dignify it by calling it bread—across the way. Cassandra touches it with a long finger and then pulls back so suddenly she hits her hands on the bars.

“There’s lyrium in it,” she says. “Traces of dust.” She leans against the wall.

“Fuck,” says Varric. Cassandra shrugs.

“Worse things,” she replies, closing her eyes.

 

~~~

 

Getting the Seeker to talk is like pulling dragon teeth.

“I spy,” Varric begins, and the resulting _thud_ of her fist against the bars makes him chuckle, the sound of it as rusty as his hair. “What are you up to over there, Seeker? Don’t tell me you’re digging your way out with a spoon.”

They haven’t come by with any water or food for her in six days. Varric isn’t sure how she’s survived without the water, but she’s doing it. The torch is out; somehow, the darkness makes it easier to hear. Her slow, meticulous breathing parts the seconds.

They’ve been down here a long time. No one has come yet. _Curly’s coming, ain’t he?_ Varric wants to ask, but it’s a useless question. The slivers of red in his arm are growing into rivers, and the Seeker doesn’t have the strength to help him ease anymore, but that’s okay. He’s figuring out how to deal with it.

She’s so quiet. He wonders if she’s afraid, or just parceling her strength, or praying.

“Seeker?”

“ _What_ , Varric?”

“Did I ever tell you about the knight-lieutenant I met in the Deep Roads?”

The question lingers between them. It is so dark he can hear her thinking.

“I…don’t recall.”

“Huh. Must have been all that jostling. Throw me around enough, Seeker, and my brain’s marbles.”

Her sigh is the closest thing they have to music down there, for all its petulance and aggravation.

“Knight-Lieutenant Jocasta,” Varric says, testing out the name like wine on his tongue. It works, wiggles in the air. He pictures blank parchment, his quill in hand, smoky firelight. He’s never met a Knight-Lieutenant Jocasta in his life but he’d like to do _something_ down here other than stew in red lyrium.

And something soft in him, the same part that reads the canticle of Andraste and sighs a little, that something says _be a balm to others_.

“Yes?” He can hear Cassandra get more comfortable, lean back against the wall. Listening.

Varric clears his throat. The empty page.

He closes his eyes. Dips the quill in ink.

“She was from Kirkwall, naturally, as all true grit heroes are. She was all muscle but tall, lean like a tree growing in Sundermount rock. She could outlast anything. A storm, a war—and shit, she’d been down in the Deep Roads a whole year with nobody but herself before we found her. Blood all over her armor, but it was gold underneath. She had _lived_.”

Cassandra makes a small noise, affirmative— _go on._ And Varric does.

 

~~~

  
“Do you and Curly have a thing?” Varric asks, stretched out with an arm under his head. One good thing about the cells is that Cassandra can’t hit him. She makes a completely incredulous noise.

“Cullen. And myself.” He hears, rather than sees, her shake her head.

“I dunno. He just seems like the upstanding type. Lots of rules, lots of order. Very pure.” Varric wiggles his eyebrows.

“He is my friend. And what makes you think I want pure?” Maybe it’s the dark that makes the Seeker sound so bold.

“Seeker!” Varric fans himself with his good hand. “You’ll make me faint.”

Cassandra snorts. “Tell me more about Jocasta. I want to know if she finds her husband.”

 

~~~

 

Four sleeps later, Knight-Lieutenant Jocasta is scouring the Deep Roads to find the Broodmother her Grey Warden husband was searching for and Varric wakes up and now everything is _red._

It reminds him of waking up and everything being blanketed in snow outside—suddenly, everything has changed without you even knowing. But this—buds of ruby crystal poke out from the corners of the walls and the cells, seep through the seams between ceiling and floor. Soft and hazy, like something in a dream.

Where there was darkness, now there is light.

“In blackest envy were the demons born,” murmurs the Seeker. She is lying on the floor of the cell, her arms around her legs as though she is cold.

There is a sound from above—many armored feet. And muttering, the low throat muttering of the Venatori mages.

“Seeker,” he says urgently, on his knees and holding the bars. She moves slightly, propping herself up on one arm. Distantly, they hear a heavy door slam. “Seeker,” he tries again.

The jostling of metal pauldrons, the sounds of shields scraping the wall.

“Cassandra,” he tries one last time, and the Seeker slowly, _slowly_ moves to her knees.

They are fiddling with the lock down the hall. A loud crack and a creak and it opens, banging against the wall.

“Fuck,” says Varric. “Seeker—tell me what to do.”

In the red dim, he sees her raise her head. Her eyes are soft, brown, and full of rage.

“Live,” she says. “I will take as many as I can with me.”

“Bullshit,” Varric snaps, “ _you_ live.”

That makes Cassandra chuckle. And then the Venatori barge into the cells.

 

 

iii.    _There's a name for it on horses,_

_when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,_

_as all flesh,_

_is proud of its wounds, wears them_

_as honors given out after battle,_

_small triumphs pinned to the chest—_

 

 

Varric lies in the red glow, staring at the ceiling. Even when he closes his eyes the red seeps in, the way it’s spread over his shoulder and into his collarbone. He can feel it nuzzling at his neck.

The more the lyrium grows in the cells, the easier and harder the pain is. He’s losing pieces of himself, just like Bartrand did. But the pain is no longer so toothsome.

The silence is full of lyrium whispers. The clang and clatter of the Seeker’s fight when the Venatori came for her, that had been a song to outshine the lyrium. She screamed, and something like a Smite—the closest word he had to what happened—nearly blinded him. A cry of a Venatori mage as the light burned the life out of him—true satisfaction.

But they had taken her anyway. Cassandra was human after all, it seemed, and going longer than he had seen a man go without food or water had diminished her strength. And…it had been…time.

 _Curly, you coming?_ he thinks. _If you are, you’re late._ Fucking _late._

 

~~~

He has no visitors. One day, he hears the sound of a skirmish down the hall—and the voice sounds like Fiona, the grand enchanter who sold the rebel mages to the Venatori. He can hear her cast, and then she cries out in pain. _Good_ , Varric thinks, his heart hard as red lyrium.

 

~~~

 

Outside, a battle rages. He presses his face to the wall at the back of a cell—can feel thousands of feet marching, the sounds of sword pommels hitting shields, the song of a firing trebuchet, and it riles his blood something fierce. He pounds his fists against the wall, cracking crystals of lyrium ( _shit,_ that hurts) in a kind of prayer— _let me fucking out._

A stone answers when a huge hole blasts through part of the hall, taking just a little piece of the wall with it. Just big enough for a dwarf to squeeze through, and before his legs know it, he’s running, running, running.

He makes it out to the courtyard and sees the breach. _Maker’s balls_ , he breathes. Green envelops the sky in swirls of abyssal veil fire.

It’s over, he realizes. Whether or not he gets out of here, it’s over. The mouth of the sky is a hungry, open, insatiable maw.  

Everything is chaos—the keep has been emptied, with everyone fighting outside the walls. Varric climbs battlements to see a sea of demons, roiling black waves of claw and tooth. Men and women in silver plate push against the tide. He imagines he can see Cullen, crying out orders and directing with his sword and shield. But he can’t. He thinks how different this would be if Adaar were here. He watches the demons and Venatori advance and he’s glad his friend is gone.

He imagines what will happen if they fail, from this little spot on the wall. He wonders where Hawke is, if he and Blondie are safe. Bethany. Fenris. Aveline. Donnic. Isabela. He imagines her taking them all on a boat and sailing far away. Can you out-sail the breach? If anyone can, she could.

He imagines Haven burning.

He wishes he could have seen Kirkwall, that stinking pile of shit, one last time. Sat in the Hanged Man and slugged one last pint of shit-ale from that shitkicker Corff. Maker. It’s the end of the fucking world.

The thought of his friends dying should burn the life out of him. And it does. He feels it carve away in a clean blow, lost to the wind that carries the cries of demons long and high.

In the center of the fray blooms a red flower of smoke and lightning, a crazed whirlpool that takes shape. A familiar figure—Varric knows that figure, knows the stoop of those spindly, red and gray skin shoulders—and reality bends in on itself, an explosion that craters the battlefield and sends Varric flying back into gray, into black, into red. _Shit_ , he thinks, and then all is silence.

 

~~~

 

He doesn’t die. He wakes up, eyes shrouded in dim lyrium. He rolls onto his belly, clamors up. Everything hurts, but not as bad as before. He suspects it’s the crystals growing out of his arm that help, but who the fuck knows.

The lyrium’s grown taller. How has he not noticed that? Here, it’s like a forest—growing tall and splitting the stone from the walls.

His head pounds and he leans it against the bars, listens. Silence.

A door down the hall opens, and there’s the sound of a struggle.

“He doesn’t want her down here,” comes a nasally male voice. “She’s supposed to be kept up in the east laboratory for observation.”

“The lab is blown to shit,” someone growls in response. “Here, for now. We’ll move her later.”

“You can try,” the accented voice is raw and hard as stone, “you bastards—”

Varric’s whole body is tethered to the spot on the bars. They emerge—two hulking Venatori warriors and _Cassandra_ , she’s there, she’s there, she’s _alive_ —

They throw her into the cell. “Get the flask,” one of them snaps to the other. The sounds of struggle are intense, and he hears the Seeker’s voice rasp in pain.

Between the two of them, he can barely see what they’re doing, but he sees one of them draw a long line of blood down Cassandra’s arm, a siphon, and a bottle of glimmering red, and then the Seeker’s raw voice cries out before it’s silenced, choked down, and the quiet is so unnerving.

There is the heavy _thunk_ of a body dropped to the stone floor. The Venatori lock up and leave.

“Seeker,” breathes Varric. “Seeker, you’re alive. Shit. _Shit._ ”

Nothing answers him.

“Seeker, it’s me,” tries the dwarf again. She’s at the back of the cell where she’s all in shadow. A soft moan answers him, and that sounds sends a fear deep into his gut that tears more than _Corypheus_ does. At least he knows what to expect from the darkspawn.

“Cassandra,” he falls back on his last resort.

He hears her struggle to move, and then sees her forearms slide into the dim light. They’re covered in long slices, stitched poorly with thread. Clusters of crystals snuggly sit behind the skin. The shallow line of blood across her arm drips blood and liquid red.

The lyrium has traveled from Varric’s arm to his shoulder and collarbone, tickled at his neck and twines long lines down his chest. It takes to him naturally, like elfroot in good, wet tree soil.

The Seeker’s body is fighting it, even as the lyrium makes itself at home. She shifts forward again, and her voice cracks with pain.

“You’re alright,” Varric murmurs before he realizes he’s speaking, “Remember, Seeker? Breathe. Breathe.”

“I’m not—“ Cassandra begins, and then a movement forward makes her gasp and she has to stop. “It’s over, Varric.”

“Bullshit,” Varric snaps—why is it that all their conversations go this way, such an easy perception of their tells and lies?—“The Seeker I know wouldn’t say that.”

“I am not a seeker,” Cassandra’s voice is quiet. “This is—not the Maker’s will. I cannot be the sword of his will. Not like this.” Varric opens his mouth to retort and then she moves into the light, and oh, _oh._

Cassandra, with tiny, aching movements, looks up at him. Her eyes gleam red, reflecting the soft glow of his own. Her arms, covered in broken flesh and red crystal and scarred lines up to her shoulders. He can see the red lyrium on the lines of her neck, tracing the strong lines of muscle. And then— _Maker—_

“My body fights it,” her voice, unbroken but rough, “but I have much of what the lyrium likes to grow. Strength. Fortitude. But the Seeker in me, it—“ A shudder wracks her and she falls down on her elbows, her hands clenched and unclenched in hard spasm.

She heaves up, grasping the bars of the cell. A long arc of red lyrium sprouts from Cassandra’s back, out of her armor, pointing towards the ceiling. It is full, ridged and gloriously red, glowing from within with soft heart. It pulses, soft.

It looks like a wing. A red wing of lyrium, arching towards the Maker’s heavens.

“It’s a—like battlefield,” Cassandra manages, and then the spasms take her whole body in seizure, and she bites her wrist to not make noise.

Varric can taste the pain from across the room, stunned into silence at his own helplessness.

“Seeker,” he murmurs, and she cries out when the seizure takes her again, trying to keep it in, clutching at the bars of the cage.

“Breathe,” he pleads. “I can’t,” is her return, gasping.

“You can. You can. Seeker, if anyone can, it’s you.” Varric doesn’t think about the way the lyrium has taken over her, the way it makes her its castle and fortress. He doesn’t think about the weight of the lyrium wing emerging from her back, how much it must hurt. He does not think about how she still looks like a woman king from a story, in spite of it all, her circlet of hair tied tight and he wants to kiss the red trails of lyrium on her neck and tell her it’s fine, it’s fine, they will _live_ —

“Breathe, Seeker,” he tries again. “The Canticle of Andraste. Say it for me.”

“What?” Even in the midst of the spasm, her voice manages to sound annoyed. That in itself feels like the breath of blessing.

“Focus. Say it. Do something.” He’s interrupted when she chokes on her own pain again, when it rears back harder and pushes— _her body, the battleground_ rings in Varric’s head—and she cries out and he pleads, “Focus, Seeker. Focus.”

She arches her back and grabs the bars of the cell again. Varric reaches through the bars, forgetting they are too far apart.

“Let the blade…let the blade pass,” he encourages, his rough voice stumbling over words he barely knows. But he has heard her pray them a hundred times since they became locked in this dark place.

“Through…the flesh,” Cassandra bites out. Varric grins, and the smile nearly cracks his face.

“Yes,” he murmurs. “Focus, Seeker. Breathe.” She does, breaths roughs and gasping like she’s drowning.

“Let my blood,” she chokes on pain again, and then comes back, stronger, “let my blood—touch the ground.”

Another spasm overtakes her, the lyrium the Venatori gave her when they brought her down making a final stand in her blood, but she grits out, “Let my cries t-t-touch their hearts. Let mine,” a breath, another breath, Varric murmurs _that’s it_ , “be the last sacrifice.”

Her head touches the bars of the cell, upon on her knees, panting. She holds it tightly, as though she will fall if she lets go.

“Those who…those who oppose thee,” Varric almost teases, listens to her ragged breathing, wants to pull her voice and her heart back one last time. “I can’t remember. I’m a shit Andrastean. Those who oppose thee.”

Cassandra’s chuckle is a gasp, wrung from her body with her last energy. She sags against the bars, and her red eyes meet his. Dim red lights under the shadow.

“Shall know the wrath of heaven,” she murmurs, and breathes, breathes, breathes.

 


	2. nothing can tear or mend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric and Cassandra find a way forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: body horror (red lyrium, natch), general dark future antics.

iv. _And when two people have loved each other,_

_see how it is like a_

_scar between their bodies,_

_stronger, darker, and proud;_

_how the black cord makes of them a single fabric_

_that nothing can tear or mend._

 

“What happened to Knight-Lieutenant Jocasta?” Cassandra asks after her even breathing has filled the space of an hour. The sound of the two of them breathing soothes Varric—it creates the illusion of quiet, of peace.

“Ah, Seeker,” he chuckles, getting comfortable against the stone wall, “you’ll never believe it.”  
  
~~~  
  
Varric talks into the night, until they both fall asleep. They wake up and it begins again—the semblance of routine. Every handful of days they come down, drag Cassandra out, drag her back in and she shudders and seizes on the stone floor.

“I saw someone,” she manages one night, after a fit. She lays on her good side, and he can just see the soft outline of the red lyrium arcing out of her back.

“Shit,” mutters Varric.

Cassandra exhales a shaky breath. “That dwarven scout,” she says. “Harding. You remember?”

“Yeah.” Of course he remembers. Freckled face, bright eyes and brighter voice. One of those surfacers who somehow gleamed like a diamond anyway. It’s such a small piece of his heart, but—yeah, there it goes.

“She’s the first—“ Cassandra is struggling to sit up. “The first I—recognized. Since I came here.” Varric grunts in response.

“Other than you,” the Seeker amends. “Before you, I was alone.”  
  
~~~  
  
“Varric, that’s ludicrous. _Ludicrous._ ”

“That’s a pretty big word for you, Seeker.”

“Of all the—! Her husband did not ride out of the weeping chasm on a _bog unicorn_ , dwarf.”

“Bog unicorns are fundamental in warden culture.”

“Griffins. You cannot tell me you do not know the story of the Grey Wardens and their griffins.”

“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. I’m just a lowly dwarf from the Free Marches.”

A long, low sigh.

“Do they…well…”

“Do they _what_ , Seeker?”

“When they reunited. Did they…were they…happy to see one another?”

“They were.”

“Ah. Did they…”

“Did they _what_?”  
  
“Never mind.”  
  
The red lyrium isn’t the only thing inside Redcliffe’s dungeons that glows red.  
  
~~~

They take Varric, next time. A whole week. He can’t remember a thing of it, just—pain, skin strung out over a rack, slices opened with scalpels and red gems dropped inside, like dice in a cup, and they rattle his bones, rattle him clean through to the soul of him, till _oh, Maker_ they take root there, dig those long claws in deep and don’t let go.

They drop him back in a cell and he’s barely there, fading in and out (the Seeker _growls_ when she’s worried, he realizes in the haze, what a world). Then he’s out like a light, black shadows over his eyes like a cool sheet. _Varric_ , something snaps in the dark, but it’s too quiet, and the dark is so peaceful.

  
~~~

An old house—one of those decrepit Kirkwall mansions, really, with the twin bannister stairs. It’s so dark. He turns to Hawke— _have Blondie twiddle his fingers, would ya? Unless you feel passionate about working by moonlight. Hmm. Good title, Working by Moonlight._

With a jolt behind his stomach—the kind when you lose your footing and realize you’re about to take a tumble—he realizes he’s alone. His hand goes up, and finds Bianca’s strapped to his back. He lets out a deep sigh of relief. Maker’s balls.

You aren’t really ever alone if you’ve got Bianca, he reassures himself, ( _but aren’t you?_ asks a nagging voice that sounds a lot like Hawke— _shut it_ is his response).

He starts towards the stairs, just able to make them out in the dark. His nightvision is good, but only surfacer-dwarf good. His feet pad up the first step, then the second, and the third—and then a moan rasps out from somewhere on the top floor, far away. He mutters, swings Bianca into his hands as quick as lightning. _Wraith_ , he thinks, but the scream is too low. And it’s too fucking dark, Void take it.

He pads up the next step. And the next. And the next. It goes on like this for awhile. When he reaches the top of the steps, he squints and listens carefully for any sound of movement, anything at all. There’ll be a torch up here on the bannister somewhere, he thinks, and then presses himself against the wall for one more quick look—

The _scream_ that echoes ricochets Varric away as though a demon’s thrown him; he hits the bannister and then rolls quick as a cat onto his knees. The screaming fills the hall, he scrambles for a flint and steel in his pocket, cold sweat running down his back and he finds the torch and finds the flint and strikes the steel and again _Andraste, that sound_ and again and again _spark, you mangy shit, spark_ and again and light, the torch lights and the sound ebbs away into a quiet moan.

There is a face in the wall. A fucking face. A woman, slits for eyes, a yawning chasm of a mouth.

The light from the torch, Varric realizes, is a very familiar red. “No,” he says, and the mouth opens and screams.

He runs, torch in hand, down the stairs but there’s no door, where did he come from? How did he get here? He launches himself back up the stairs and suddenly there’s another face, a man’s face on the stairs—Varric nearly crunches the mouth in with his boot—and it screams, and he runs, runs, runs. The man looked like his father, he thinks, but it’s not a possible thought. No time for the impossible, only time to write about it later.

He wrenches at a brass door knocker with one hand, the torch still clasped tightly in the other. He growls, punches the wall beside it. The wall—it doesn’t crunch or break. It—sags, pushes back. It bruises.

“Maker,” breathes Varric, not even able to form a swear after the oath. The bruise darkens, rounds, gives birth to a small, open face. It looks like Bianca but it doesn’t. It can’t. It starts to scream.

  
He drops the torch but everything is alight with a sweet red glow, now. He bangs on the walls but every touch gives life to another face and he knows them all, knows them all even though they’re twisted and look nothing like what he etched on the back of his heart. His Tantervale agent with the scar over her eye. Bartrand sings in a thick, heaving moan. Daisy, vallaslin like fingerpainted blood. Hawke, an artful touch of scruff. He doesn’t scream, just shuts his mouth and isn’t that just fucking _typical._

He can’t stop trying to beat his way out, and the faces grow to a choir of strange scars, their screams ringing and mingling together until it’s a song, a screeching song under the glow of the red torch, and he can’t breathe, he knows them all, he knows them— _fuck, is that the Seeker?_ —all, and this is— _can’t be_ —this is what his brother heard, this is what drove him mad— _no_ —this is it, the end, the last page, shit—

~~~

He opens his eyes and there’s darkness, the red glow, and screaming. Someone is screaming as though they’re drowning from the bottom of a well. And then—

“ _Varric!”_ A mix between a growl and a shout, hard-edged with…fear? Can’t be.

 _End of the world, remember,_ something chuckles in the back of his head and when the Seeker cries his name again it cuts through the noise. He was the one screaming.

Varric turns over on his belly, heaves and gags and can barely support himself on his hands. The crystals dig into his skin like shards of glass. Heaving breaths bend his back.  
  
He sags onto his side, crooked red lungs gulping deep breaths of the dungeon air. Tastes like mildew. Tastes like _life._

“You wanted something, Seeker?” His voice is so raw it’s like the rasp of a boot across the stone. Her sound of relief—something like a laugh, something like a gasp—is silver music, a balm to the screaming that runs red in his blood.  
  
~~~

The sound of a cleared throat.

“Yes, Seeker?”

“You never—you didn’t finish. Did they…”

“Are you talking about the Knight-Lieutenant and her bonny warden husband?”

“Maker’s breath, Varric.”

“You said you didn’t want pure! I’m trying to think of the best way to…phrase their reunion.”

“It takes so long?”

“You can’t rush art, Seeker.”  
  
~~~  
  
They are lying on the stone floor, looking up at the ceiling. A few cracks adorn the stone, tiny tributaries of light. Varric can see red through them. He pretends they’re lying on hillside in the Hinterlands, gazing on the stars. Or maybe on a stone roof, drinking some shitty Kirkwall swill and playing cards on a crate. He almost believes it—the power of his imagination feels boundless since pen and paper were taken from him.

“You knew where Hawke was,” Cassandra says when the silence is ready. The tone is surprisingly even. There’s a hint of her petulance—when isn’t there?—but there’s no such thing as fear anymore.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Well—kind of. I knew how to get ahold of him.” The Seeker doesn’t say anything, and Varric fills the silence. “He and Blondie jumped ship, went somewhere safe. Hawke was—well. He’d move Sundermount stone by stone for that idiot.” He stretches. “What a mess.”

The Seeker grunts her agreement, and is quiet. Varric enjoys how after all this time, he can hear her think. It’s not a quiet thing.

“It’s good,” she finally says. “I keep thinking…” She trails off. Varric waits. He’s good at this now.

“Hawke’s out there,” the Seeker muses. “The Hero of Ferelden. Maybe…” She sighs, wistful. “If anyone had a chance, it’s them.”

Varric makes a non-committal noise. He saw the sky—Cassandra didn’t. She doesn’t get how fucked they are, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell her. It’s easier to pretend.

“I wanted to keep him safe,” is what Varric says instead.

~~~

Cassandra tells him fragments of her life. Why she grew up with an uncle in Nevarra instead of her parents. Getting trotted about to balls like a skittish filly. She mentions a brother on accident, but Varric doesn’t press. Everyone deserves something to themselves in this hellhole.

One night, she starts murmuring a story. It’s after the Venatori have brought her back from wherever they drag her, and she’s weak and stretched out on the cell floor. Balancing precariously on her good side. Varric tells her to stop playing the hero and sleep, for the Maker’s sake, but ignores him. Calls him a clucking hen. That’s enough to shut him up.

She tells him about tracking a dragon down on her own, weaving together entrails and strings of meat and lying in wait for weeks. “I was obsessed,” she says, with something like fond recollection. “I wanted to wear its teeth like a crown.” Varric imagines her ducking her dark head, imagines stringing teeth through the circlet of her hair. It would be clumsy, but he’d do it.

“It took two weeks, but it took the bait,” she murmurs, and then the battle is everything he would have imagined. A young Cassandra, decked in silver armor, parrying and slicing at the hamstrings and barely diving out of the way of ill-aimed flames. He commits every detail to memory—it is going in a book he will never write, but he doesn’t care. She stabs it in the eye with her longsword, manages to gore it through the tender, scaly throat. Covered in dragon blood, she staggers from her feet to look at the steaming, hulking body. The ground was in great pits, trees knocked over, and the sun set on the young Seeker’s victory.

“But then,” and Cassandra’s voice drops now, a cool wind over the stones, “I saw it. I saw—“ She takes a breath. “There was a Dalish clan camped some miles from where I was luring the dragon. Their steeds roamed free.” The part of Varric that followed Daisy around for six-odd years wants to correct with a rolling lilt and a chuckle, but he holds it back.

“The dragon’s tail had caught a halla, slammed it into a tree. Broke three of its legs.” Her voice has no emotion. “It was trying to, to pull itself up. It made the most horrible sounds—it was so…” She trails off, trying to piece it together. “Afraid. It was like a child.”

The air is so still now. Cassandra says, “I killed it. Quickly, just a cut across the throat. To spare it pain.” She exhales a long, long breath. “It died, and suddenly I was the girl who killed a dragon and a halla in the same quarter of an hour.”

None of this surprises Varric—of course it would be the Seeker. She goes on. “I never told anyone. I thought I would die with that secret.” The unspoken _but_ hangs in the air.

“It happens, Seeker,” says Varric quietly. “Shit happens.”

The quiet is different that hangs between them; it trembles with unspoken words.

“Seeker?” Varric's voice is a murmur. “What’s wrong?” No response. “Come on, Seeker. It’ll be alright. Tell me.” He sighs quiety, his voice as gentle as it’s ever been. “If you can’t tell me, tell the stones. They don’t gossip.”

Cassandra says, “I saw Leliana,” and her voice breaks on the center of the sister’s name. Varric lets his head rest back against the stone, and closes his eyes.

In no world would anyone try to fill this space with words of comfort—Varric doesn’t know if she’s alive or dead, but it can’t be good either way—this is only a space for arms, for heads tucked into shoulders, for faces pressed against necks. For breaths hidden against warm skin. Varric is a master of these moments on the page, he would know.

He can do none of those things, neither can she. In the quiet, he pretends his breath settles over her clavicle, stroking like a thumb. Settles around her waist, like an arm. Settles against her temple, like a kiss.

They are going to die here. Neither is the type to bring it up. But they are going to die here.

It’s worth saying, though—not alone.  
  
~~~

They take them more often now, back and forth from the cells. Things seem to be coming together for the Venatori and falling apart at the same time—maybe they’re catching on that’s how the end of days works, thinks Varric with a wicked grin as they tie him to a rack. Nobody escapes. These fuckers ever read a book?  
  
~~~

“Alright, Varric. Tell me.”

“You’ve got to spell it out, Seeker. I’m not as intelligent as you think.”

“Will you never weary of antagonizing me?”

“Never, Seeker. That’s a promise. Good as gold.”

“Euch.” She spits.

“What was that, Seeker?”

“I want to know—Jocasta and her husband. Do they kiss?”

“Oh, is that what you’ve been wondering?”

“Maker take you, Varric.”

“Do they kiss? Do they kiss. Yes.”

A pause. Some waiting. And then, a plea: “That’s _all?_ ”

Varric’s rusty chuckle is warm, and not because of the lyrium. “What do you want to know?”

“How?!” That’s the true voice of the Seeker of truth; Varric remembers the sound of it as she stabbed one of his books through with a dagger. “ _How._ ”

“Ah, Seeker,” he says, looking up at the cracks in the ceiling. He closes his eyes, pictures the words on the page as he quill completes each gentle swoop. “He kisses her like a man who hasn’t seen his wife in a year—can you imagine? A whole year, both of them alone and lost underground. What a shitty deal.”

Cassandra makes an extremely frustrated noise and Varric laughs, a real laugh, warmth in his bones. He feels dizzy. “He falls to his knees and kisses her hands, kisses the palms where the sword made them hearty and hale and strong enough to save him. He kisses her wrists to feel that she lives, that she’s more than a Blight-driven fever dream. And then he kisses the divot at the base of her neck, because he’s always wondered how that might feel under his lips—”

Varric stops, closing his teeth on what comes next. He can’t go forward, not without her. Across the way, Cassandra breathes in and out, says, “And then?”

He smiles. It cracks his lips. “He kisses her, till the moon comes down to the Deep Roads and the world falls to pieces. Because he can.”  
  
~~~

He’s not expecting it, the day they take Cassandra for good.

The Venatori come and it’s different because they’ve got a cage. A cage to fit her in and hoist up with magic. They’re taking her somewhere else. He knows it by instinct.

They don’t say anything. There’s nothing to be said. Cassandra breaks a Venatori’s nose before getting on her knees in the cage. They lock eyes, rimmed with red. She takes a deep breath, and Varric nods.

 _Live_ , Varric wills silently. He doesn’t know if she hears. All he knows is he looks her in the eye until the doors slam shut behind them, and then he’s alone.

~~~

Maker’s balls, he really was going to feel what it was like to lose everything he’d ever had. Slowly. By inches.

Shit.  
  
~~~

  
It’s too empty without the Seeker’s breathing, emptier without the noisy buzz of her thoughts.

Varric hums to fill the void. Old songs from the Hanged Man, Fereldan songs that Hawke and Bethany would half-yell, half-sing drunk, folk songs from his mother. Everything he knows, over and over.

~~~

The first month is bearable. He’s done it before.

The second month he survives. It’s not so much longer.

Month three, he’s breathing because it’s the only thing he remembers how to do. The song keeps him company. He can’t fight it, not alone.  
  
~~~

He opens his eyes, and Adaar stands in front of the bars. His silver-capped horns gleam with light in the underground; the sight of it hurts Varric’s eyes.

“My friend,” says the Qunari, his voice gentle even now.

“Andraste’s sacred knickers.” These are the first words Varric has spoken in months. “You’re alive.”

The Tevinter mage half-explains everything while Adaar gets Varric out of the cell, helps him to his feet. He hands him Bianca, and it is truly a miracle how at home the crossbow is in his hands again. He breathes deep, reeling.

Adaar opens the door and peers up the stairs. “All clear?” he calls quietly.

“All clear.” A voice, hard as stone. Varric stands at the foot of the stairs and breathes, “ _Seeker._ ”

She stands up the steps, the red lyrium wing bigger than he remembers and bathing the stone around her in a red glow. Her sword is in her hand, and she clutches it tight though he knows how badly that must hurt her lyrium-scarred palms. Her eyes gleam red, a swath of lyrium curls down her leg. And her circlet, always in place, even now, is pinned firmly to her head.

She looks like a goddess of war. She looks like a woman king. She looks like home.

Cassandra looks down at him, red eyes meeting red eyes, and smiles.

“Let’s go,” says Adaar, bounding up the stairs, and they follow, follow, follow.

  
~~~  
  
They comb through the cells, putting the pieces together. Varric half-listens—he can’t take his eyes from the Seeker. He wants to be next to her at all times. He wants to get her alone.

Andraste’s arse, what would he even do? The thought’s laughable.

They find Leliana and her face of ash. Cassandra embraces her unabashedly, and Leliana returns it, her arms going carefully around the red lyrium growing out of Cassandra. The left and right hand make a fist, thinks Varric. He feels like a man going mad. It can’t be real, none of it can be.

He wants to ask Leliana what happened to the rest of them—where’s Curly, where’s Ruffles, has anyone heard from Hawke, is Anora still queen?

But he doesn’t want to know the answers. They no longer matter. Not if this can go away.

Not if he can get another _chance._

  
~~~  
  
“Let’s split up,” says Adaar. “We need six pieces of red lyrium.” He takes the Tevinter mage, Leliana heads off alone with her bow held high, and Varric and the Seeker are left in the center of the room alone.

Cassandra nods up a staircase and he follows, They sneak up on some Venatori in a stairwell, and the sound of Bianca’s bolts hitting one of them square in the chest makes him feel like falling in love. He’s missed this shit.

Cassandra spins through them, her sword and shield like lightning and stone. She cuts off the last one’s head and wipes the blood on his pointy-hooded cloak.  
  
Varric pockets the lyrium. “One more,” he says, “and then we’re going _home._ ”

It’s not true, of course. But it’s worth it for the grin on the Seeker’s face.

They head through a back passage, find another pocket of Venatori humming around a fire in a small library. The fighting details bore Varric—at this point, his editor might say, _less Venatori, more interesting things—Varric, only so much blood and guts before we get bored._  

The Seeker is on her knees, rummaging through a Venatori’s cloak. He’s bled out against the bookshelf. She slides a shard of lyrium out and hands it to him. And then she pauses.

“Varric,” she says, her voice tinged with a giddy edge, “ _look._ ”

She pulls a book off the bookshelf. _Tale of the Champion, by Varric Tethras._ She twists, pressing it into his hands.

“Not even my best one,” says Varric. He pulls the book from her hands, drops it on the floor, and kisses her. The quill in his brain stops moving; ink blots the page.

He can’t taste anything but lyrium (and ain’t that a damn shame?), but she’s warm in a way it never was, and when she makes a little noise and carefully folds her lyrium studded arms around his neck—his brain, frayed by lyrium and blackness, only murmurs _Seeker_ and _the world is ending_ and _Seeker, Seeker, Seeker._

It’s backwards from how he imagined it—she’s on her knees, not him—but it works.

 _I’d do it again_ , he thinks in a haze. And he wouldn’t, not in this hellhole. But a tiny voice in the back of his head, the one that sounds like Hawke, says: _yeah, but you probably would._

He’s close enough to see that tiny crystals of red lyrium part Cassandra’s eyelashes. He kisses each one. He kisses her forehead, feels the warmth of her skin. And last, he kisses the circlet of her hair, the crown that marks her king, this woman who killed halla and dragons and _lived_ and, for some reason he can’t fathom, hauled him along too.

Adaar pokes his head in. “We’ve got four— _oh._ Uh—just a moment, then?” He retreats, shutting the door.

Cassandra kisses the knuckles of his hands, stands. Varric immediately realizes that they haven’t said anything. The thought cripples his heart with panic. There’s so much he wants to say. He’s had months to think of it. But his mouth is as empty as the wastes.

The Seeker stops at the door, turns. “Time,” she says to him. “We will have time.” She clenches her fists, looks down at the ground. He remembers the two tears a year ago, the first signs of the world’s end.

“Time,” he agrees, his voice raw. She nods, touches her fist to her chest. A vow.

~~~

The fight against Alexius is disturbingly brief. Leliana slices his son’s throat and the life goes out of the magister like the wind from a sail. Adaar cuts his hamstring, turns out the flashly mage is good with fire, Leliana takes down the guards and Cassandra holds him down with her sword to his throat.

“What happened to your arm, Alexius?” asks the mage, curious.

“I took it,” Cassandra answers, “as payment.”

Varric could swoon.

Adaar glances up and in the next moment the whole castle is shaking. Varric hears the skittering of demons outside—a second-nature sound, now. The mage is fumbling the amulet, trying to cast and soft, green fire begins to gather in a streaky whirlpool.

He can hear the demons outside—the lyrium makes him feel it, and there’s so _many_. Cassandra is by his side suddenly, catching his eye. Her hand is on his shoulder.

Varric nods. She squeezes, just once, then hefts her sword up and strides towards the door.

Adaar cries out—the mage grabs him hard by the forearm. “You can’t do this,” the Qunari says, wide eyes filled with horror.

“We’re buying you time,” says Leliana.

“Don’t worry, Adaar,” Varric says, his voice tired and edged with relief—one way or another, this is about to be over. “I’m sure we’ll leave a few for you.”

The Seeker opens the door, allows him through first, and then shuts it behind them.

Silence. They are alone, just for a moment.

“Cassandra,” says Varric.

“Keep saying my name,” is her answer. Her arms are so strong as she lifts her sword, but her voice wavers just slightly. “On the other side.”

Varric grins. “What is it? ‘Till the moon comes down to the Deep Roads.’” His chuckle masks the way his throat tightens so hard he can’t breathe.

She makes that noise— _auch_ —total disgust, but a blush fades in faintly on her cheekbones.

Then a pride demon bursts out of a side corridor and it all goes cockarse.

They’re pressed hard against the door, Cassandra dueling hard with the pride demon while Varric aims Bianca as the spindly legged demons with the claws as long as his arms. They screech and clatter, and then _swarm_ —could they swarm before?—and while Varric is shooting one in the chest another winds around him and sinks its claws deep, deep into his chest.

He goes down. Cassandra roars—Maker, a sound he never wanted to hear again—and it tinges with pain. She’s standing over him, he can see the blood running down her legs and feel the life sighing out of him. She staggers but pushes up; beheads a long-legged demon and bashes a fire spirit back with an easy flinch of her shield.

He could watch her fight forever. He will watch her till he dies.

A cold wetness streams around him; he raises a hand and it is green and black. The door slams open and he’s thrown onto more cold stone. _Seeker,_ he thinks blearily, _Seeker_ —

Leliana is shooting arrows as though her hands were lightning. He raises his head in time to see a wraith snaking towards him—a powerful strike from a shield knocks it back, and Cassandra falls to her knees next to him. She grinds her teeth, stands, and the pride demon’s whip of crackling light snakes around her body, curls tight and she cries out—

He hears Adaar shouting; a demon slices Leliana across the neck and the green and black washes over his head, filling his lungs and the room and every corner of his mind. He feels it burn away the lyrium, wash the remains away like grits of sand and diamond on skin. His body is so heavy.

 _Shit_ , he thinks. _Shit._ And then, nothing.  
  
~~~

He does not die. He stands, his crossbow pointed at a magister in a dark and strange hall. Adaar, his tall Qunari friend who he saw put a baby chickadee back in a nest yesterday, stands panting and ready, long daggers drawn. The Tevinter mage (Glitter? Glow?) beams like his smile is the sun.

“Varric!” The sound of the Seeker’s voice is like a slap, jolting him across dimensions. “Be ready.”

“Keep your armor on, Seeker,” he drawls. She rolls her eyes. He glances at her and their eyes meet—for a moment, everything is red and deep and something he can’t name. A strand of dark hair has pulled loose from the braided circlet adorning her head. 

He shakes it off, looks away. He looks forward. The future waits for them, breathes.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck it, I need to see them happy. Prepare for a second installment.  
> Thanks for reading - your feedback totally floors me. You're all wonderful.  
> tumblr: klickitats


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